The following Turtle Beach Stealth Pivot Wireless Smart Controller was provided by the manufacturer for review purposes. We may earn affiliate commission if you purchase items through links on XboxEra. Read more about affiliate commission here.
This is Turtle Beach’s Stealth Pivot Wireless Smart controller, designed to work with Xbox consoles via a wired connection and supports full wireless to PC via a 2.4GHz dongle and a Bluetooth connection that’ll work with Android devices and Steam Input if need be. A word salad, all that, but that’s how I feel about this controller. This new Stealth Pivot is feature-packed, taking on the likes from the company’s previously released ‘Stealth Ultra’ premium controller and somehow tacking on even more capabilities onto this little controller’s comfortable frame. Seriously, those sticks you see on the featured picture up top? They can roll right over and become an entirely different controller—a retro game slash fighting pad combo, or mix and match!
I’ve had a week with the Stealth Pivot and I took it with me wherever I went. I jammed it into a little bag and shoved it into my backpack and likely crushed this controller more than once… But, no issues so far! This little kit has impressed me so far, in spite of its software drawbacks and other quirks. Read on and weep!
The Screen
The Stealth Pivot inherits its design philosophy from the Stealth Ultra, released a few months back, but with a few changes. You have your built-in display that allows you to modify the onboard key configurations on the fly (it can also notify you of notifications that your device may receive during gameplay, you social butterfly), there’s one set of customisable back buttons, and the overall small but bulky look of the controller, which include the grooves you see around the palm grips. Yes, I wash my hands and no I don’t eat and game. But like all things in life crumbs and dust will make their way into those little crevices.
The way of life aside, let me run over the built-in software real quick. The Stealth Pivot lets players change their controller settings via its built-in screen, which can be adjusted by pressing the plus button and pressing either the bumpers to swap between five profiles or the A button to enter into the main menu. In the main menu, we’re able to adjust the settings of our profile, check social alerts (I’ll touch on this one in a bit), and switch connection modes. For buttons, we can set the D-pad to behave as the left or right joystick and we can adjust the behaviour of the “P” buttons. Remember how I said there’s two less back buttons? Well, I technically lied—they’ve been moved into the right-side controller pivot, and I’ll go over that in a bit, too. And lastly, there is a little notch in the middle that can be customised to adjust volume, equalisation, microphone mute, and the like. Very nifty! Messing with this made me notice just how often the pink RGBs blare in your face as you press menu buttons—perfect for that sort of person, I suppose.
This on-screen display gives you a tonne of control over the Stealth Pivot without ever having to hook up to a separate software on your PC or mobile phone. And trust me, that’s for the best, because the Control Center 2 software that you can link the controller to is clumsy at best and outright doesn’t work at its worst. You’ll need this app to update your controller, but if you want to receive notifications on your on-screen display, you’ll need to link the Pivot to this app every single time it’s disconnected from the controller’s menu and the app.
Besides that, so far I’m loving the control I get over key mappings just by using the controller alone.
The Pivot
With the screen out of the way, let’s talk about the controller itself and its big feature: being able to “pivot” the controls and completely changing how you use this thing. The Stealth Pivot is a light but chonky little device. It doesn’t feel cheap, mind you, but it definitely feels busy and I chalk that up to the way it looks and the grips themselves being smoother rather than having a bumpy texture like most controllers on the market do. But in gameplay, I never noticed these little remarks and I highly doubt you will, too. The triggers also support press lengths, cutting down the overall time to fully press down the triggers. Perfect for smashing those taiko notes as quickly as they appear. And of course, there’s an AUX port below for audio connections.
And here we have the pivoting stuff. See, on the front of the controller you’ll see two capsule-shaped protrusions in the body of the controller. These things can actually flip over and present a completely different set of buttons and controls, best suited for 2D and fighting games. It’s really neat, but I won’t lie it took me a bit to figure out how it all worked. That’s what I get for tossing the manual, mind you, but the Stealth Pivot doesn’t necessarily make it obvious on how these capsules rotate. Flipping it over, you’ll find two notches that can be switched to unlock the capsules and then you can push an empty space on whichever side you’ve unlocked to flip ’em over.
This is a really cool idea and, far as I can tell, the Stealth Pivot is one of the first controllers of its kind to be able to just… Flip over and become a completely different pad. I do take issues with how the pivot occurs, however, as it’s not always a perfect “click” in place of sorts. There were times where I would unlock the pivot, flip it over, and then try to lock it back in place but be unable to do so. The capsules are sort of freely rotating in place and there’s no way to tell if a capsule is in place to be locked besides just fiddling a bit and looking at it from the front.
And as a side note, to rotate the capsules over, you’ll have to rotate the sticks into a down position of sorts, and I thought this was a feature at first. Unfortunately, the Stealth Pivot was never meant to be used this way, which is a bit of a shame as I did like how the sticks felt when they were closer to the controller. And while I’m also at it, the Stealth Pivot feels weirdly… Cold? I chalk that up to the bare plastic that adjourns the Pivot, but this is the first time I’ve ever noticed how cold a controller could get. On the bright side, it’s kept my palms mostly sweat-free, so if that’s an intended feature I certainly appreciate it.
Now don’t take this the wrong way, I actually really love how the Stealth Pivot feels and how I basically have two controllers in one with me wherever I go. I’ve taken the Stealth Pivot with me to coffee shoppes, work, and at home where I plugged this thing into as many devices as I possibly could. It’s a convenient, feature-filled controller that came in handy as I jumped from racers to fighters. The sticks feel good to use and their mechanics are based on Hall Sensors, with the Stealth Pivot happily letting you know that the analog sticks are “Antidrift” on the casing. And I’m a slightly paranoid soul, so being able to just pivot the sticks back into the controller makes me much more at ease knowing that the likelihood of my some hundred-dollar controller can’t be easily crushed in my bag.
The D-pad on the left-hand pivot, once flipped over, features a strong and tactile 360-degree input that feels great to use in games like ‘TEKKEN 8‘. Truthfully, I can’t tell you if this controller will be replacing your current pad for fighters—you’d have to make that judgement on your own, but the Stealth Pivot will save you the hassle of dragging an extra controller around while still being a feature-filled and competent premium controller. Though you’ll have to bring a long USB-C cable with you if you’re using this with an Xbox console as unfortunately it only supports a wired connection with said hardware. PC and Android mobile players shan’t need to worry though, game on wirelessly! PC connections are done via its USB dongle, wired, or a Bluetooth connection with a translator like Steam Input in the background.
Personally, I used wired controllers with my Xbox console, so this wasn’t a problem for me. It’s also one of the reasons why I wasn’t able to truly drain the battery on this little thing. A few days back, with about eight hours or so of play, the battery level had dropped to about half which is more than reasonable while charges are fairly quick. My wireless controller gaming had been done mostly through my Asus ROG Ally hooked up to a TV dock with no input drops nor connectivity issues. My living room is fairly wide and because of just how well the Pivot handles this, it’s become the de facto controller for my Ally.
Considering the price point and features available, forget the Xbox Elite 2—the Stealth Pivot is one of the best premium controllers I’ve used in the last two years. Buttons and sticks are responsive, connectivity is strong even in large environments, the pivot features is awesome and has come in handy more than a couple of times over the last week. It’s unfortunate that the software for the controller is not up to par with even some of the most basic controllers on the market and there are some construction quirks with regards to build quality and functionality (such as the pivot switches), but I never felt like this thing would fall apart in my hands. If you’re looking for a capable controller that’s convenient for multiple genres of games, feature-filled, and has a good battery life, the Stealth Pivot is a great option that sits at a reasonable price point amongst its competitors. ∎
The Turtle Stealth Pivot Wireless Smart Controller can be purchased directly from the manufacturer or through your local retailer worldwide @ $129.99/£119.99/€129.99 MSRP. It is available for purchase via Amazon here.
